The fallout? The INDY never reviewed Crawford and Son, the Triangle was divided on whether Crawford was courageous or cowardly, and Andrea Weigl, the News & Observer's former food editor, followed her pro-Crawford report on the contretemps with multiple even more pro-Crawford pieces (though her own paper's editorial board took the INDY's side).

In FEBRUARY, Chapel Hill lost an institution when Chapel Hill Comics closed because of downtown development pressures and some poor business decisions by a new owner. (Luckily, the Ultimate Comics empire is going strong, turning its NC Comicon biannual.) Carolina Performing Arts scored a major coup for the Triangle's national stature when it booked Glass at 80, a sprawling tribute to composer Philip Glass that otherwise was seen only in larger cities. Durham musician and author John Darnielle released Universal Harvester, a follow-up to Wolf in White Van, which was recently picked to become a film as part of Sundance's Screenwriters Lab program.

In the music world, queer punk band PWR BTTM was dropped from both Hopscotch and a Pinhook bill after sexual assault allegations against band member Ben Hopkins came out (but good for our local presenters for doing the right thing). And we reported on our concerns about the uneven allocation of city resources between Durham's jazz-focused Art of Cool Festival and the tech-focused Moogfest, not to mention some of the appropriative branding of the latter. (We raised an eyebrow at such an expensive, elite festival having something called a "Protest Stage.") Moogfest's heart seems to be in the right place, if only its head can followit recently caused another stir by announcing its first wave of 2018 programming as a female, trans, and nonbinary bill without telling the artists they were being marketed this way, drawing a sharp rebuke from Caroline Polachek, who tweeted, "Furious to be (without approval) on an all-female & non-gender-binary announcement list for @Moogfest. Gender is not a genre. I don't need a sympathy pedestal, esp from a male curator. Take my name off this list and put me in the pit with the boys."

On a lighter note, if you missed it, one of our favorite INDY reads this year came when music editor Allison Hussey dug up the tale of a little-remembered The Handmaid's Tale movie filmed in Durham in 1989, which had a script by Harold freaking Pinter and sparked controversy by staging the hanging scene at Duke Chapelwithout telling anyone at Duke Chapel.

The hits kept coming throughout the hottest month. We praised the opening of Brewery Bhavana in Raleigh but got a lot more attention for our review of The Lakewood, the new high-end restaurant in the Lakewood neighborhood from Scratch chef-owner Phoebe Lawless. INDY food editor Victoria Bouloubasis took a community-journalism tack, bringing Mexican immigrants who had lived in the neighborhood for twenty years to find out what they thought of the atmosphere and the fare. The review was more balanced than the response, which was split between extremesanxious progressives who felt unfairly called out on one side, activists and Latinx people who felt seen and heard at last on the other. These anxieties on both sides were understandable, at a time when Lakewood is rapidly changing. Following the Scrap Exchange's move there,Cocoa Cinnamon also opened a Lakewood location in August, and a second Scratch location came in the fall.

NOVEMBER brought the sad news that Chapel Hill institution the Chelsea, one of the area's last old-school art cinemas, would close at the end of the year unless it found a buyer (no updates yet; we'll keep you posted). But the bigger news was an arrival, not a departure. The INDY's investigation into the culture of toxic masculinity, racial bias, and unaccountability that pervade the PIT, the New York-based improv theater that bought DSI Comedy's Franklin Street space, garnered widespread support and gratitude from the comedy community and some pushback from people who didn't get what the big deal was about a few rape jokes and a nonexistent sexual harassment policy.

The Triangle ended the year on a high note in DECEMBER when a bumper crop of local artists, including Sylvan Esso, Rapsody, and Iron & Wine, pulled down Grammy nominations. We hope that, in next year's wrap-up, we'll have more good news along these lines to report. But let's be realthe purging process that began this year is not stopping any time soon, and we're not going to stop following it until it's done.